2/23/2015

Cold Here? It's Crazy Fuckin' Hot Down Under

You want climate change evidence? There's your fuckin' climate change evidence, numbnuts. That's a chart of the number of days per year where temperatures were above the 99th percentile for average temperatures in Australia. In other words, the number of days that were in the warmest 1% recorded between 1910 and 2013. Now, the Rude Pundit is no mad statistician, but he can spot a trend. In fact, things have gotten so fucked that half of those days have occurred in the last 20 years.

But, no, really, let's burn some more fossil fuel and dig for coal for shits and giggles.

Australia is in the midst of another heat wave season. Some areas got some relief this week, but that's only because they were hit by a pair of tropical cyclones. Of course, they didn't hit where the massive bushfires are, but that's because Nature is a tricky bitch. The smoke from those fires in Western Australia has almost reached Antarctica.

An independent, crowd-funded group, the Climate Council, released a report this month detailing how fucked beyond fucked Australia is by global warming. Some of its findings, reached by synthesizing existing information, include:

"The number of heatwave days has increased over much of Australia, particularly the eastern half."
"Heatwaves are occurring more frequently in terms of the number of heatwave events per summer."
"The duration of the longest yearly heatwave is increasing."
"The first heatwave in the season is occurring earlier over almost all of Australia."
"The hottest day in a heatwave – its peak – is becoming even hotter over almost all of Australia below the tropics."

Even more particularly: In Sydney, heatwaves now start 19 days earlier than they did in 1950. In Adelaide, heatwaves are 4.3C degrees hotter, and there's double the number of heat wave days. "Heat wave" here means it reaches 40C, easily. Oh, that's 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Often it's 116 or pushing 120.

By the way, the reason that the Climate Council had to be independently funded is because Australia's Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, is basically George W. Bush without the charm. Yeah, he abolished the government's Climate Commission, which had been charged with looking into ways to avert climate change. He did this in September 2013, during the hottest year ever in Australia. In fact, in 2013, Australia had its hottest day, hottest month, and hottest season ever, too. The good news is that people are generally sick of Abbott, so he might be out of office soon. It remains to be seen if he's replaced politicians who are willing to do something about the climate down under, which, by 2090, if we do nothing, could make The Road Warrior look like a pleasant weekend with friends.

Yeah, it's colder than fuck this winter up here in the states. We just wanna stay indoors. But, holy shit, if you were in Australia, you'd be diving into the ocean, sharks or not.